Last
September I was in Shanghai for ShContemporary, billed as
Asia’s first truly international contemporary art fair. The
fair was evidence that not only are Chinese artworks hot commodities
in the global art market but that there is a growing potential
for new Chinese collectors. Contemporary art is not only big
business, it is, according to the Miami art collector Rosa
de la Cruz, “the new glamour.”

Despite
this, the best work I saw in China was distinctly unglamorous.
An installation by Liu Jianhua at the Shanghai Gallery of
Art at Three on the Bund called Export—Cargo Transit
filled the space with piles of sterilized garbage and industrial
waste. This piece beautifully exemplified the contradictions
inherent in China’s exponential growth. It demonstrated the
human and environmental costs of globalization and stood as
a metaphor for the way China and other developing countries
remain dumping grounds for the West. Another artist who comments
on contradictions is Xiang Liqing. His photographs of recently
built houses in the rapidly expanding areas around Pudong
are surreal, and somewhat comical, studies in the way pseudo-Western
architectural styles have infiltrated the consciousness of
newly rich farmers as they seek status symbols for their wealth.
These are only a couple examples of work coming out of China
that explores the complicated nature of an emerging superpower
as perceived by its own citizens.

Because
of my own outsider experience of China, it was with great
anticipation that I went to see Eastern Standard: Western
Artists in China. While the exhibition’s theme is certainly
timely, the topic is so vast that the exhibition ultimately
never quite congeals. Because there are only one or two works
by each artist, the exhibition felt superficial and without
any real message. Some of the work included even felt like
an afterthought. Jules de Balincourt’s painting is placed
in an awkward spot, and I almost missed David Thomas’s Two
Steps.

Edward
Burtynsky’s work, at least, was well-represented. His photographs
underscore the complexity of the paradox that is China. Urban
Renewal #11, Hold Out, Shanghai shows a typical scene
behind the veneer of a city in rapid transformation as new
buildings replace old. Three Gorges Dam Project, Yangtze
River, Feng Jie #3 and #4 shows people at work
dismantling their own villages by hand to make way for the
controversial dam. In these photographs and in his photographs
of workers, factories, and dormitories, Burtynsky continues
his conversation about the transformation of landscape by
industry.

Another
artist who focused on landscape, in this case urban, was David
Cotterrell, whose South Facing 4:3 was rightly placed
at the entrance to the exhibition. This colossal floor piece
uses 1000 plaster models of high-rises spread out like a replicating
virus taking over the city. What is incredible about this
piece is the way it mimics the insanely gigantic city model
at the Urban Planning Centre in Shanghai. In Cotterrell’s
model, however, there is little variety and the plan takes
on distinctly fascist undertones. Michael Wolf’s photographs
echo the repetitiveness of Cotterrell’s sculpture. Wolf’s
Architecture of Density photographs depict details of the
ubiquitous high-rises of Hong Kong, where space is at a premium.
The work appears completely abstract at first glance, then
the small details of people’s lives become apparent upon closer
inspection. A similar density is apparent in Cotterrell’s
other work, which is video-based and focuses on the traffic
conductors who, despite being dwarfed by the sheer amount
of traffic and people, go about their Sisyphean tasks relatively
unfazed.

Whereas
Cotterrell and Wolf explore urban development and the ways
in which humans adapt to their environment, Tobias Bernstrup
envisions the burgeoning Pudong skyline as a playground for
a giant praying mantis. In a conflation of past and present
the prehistoric-looking bugs dwarf the replicas of the futuristic
looking Oriental Pearl tower and the Jin Mao tower. While
Bernstrup’s video raises questions about the virtual and the
real, Catherine Yass’s video Lock is a surreal look
at the reality of an engineering project that is now widely
considered to be an environmental nightmare. With cameras
facing both forward and backward, Yass captures the journey
through a lock. It is an apt metaphor for China as it reveals
both its constructive and destructive potential.

There
is other interesting work in the exhibition that explores
a variety of topics, from Tiananmen Square to video games,
from the cultural revolution to scholar’s gardens, and Shangri-La;
however, each new work added another level to a discourse
that ultimately went nowhere. I left the exhibition thinking
more about my own experiences in China than anything I had
just seen.